


Justice and Revenge by the Same Hand

by droukhunter



Series: Tears in the Rain [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: All-Consuming Vengeance Quest, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Implications of Biavi's PTSD, Implicit Suicidal Ideation, Moral Event Horizon Moment, Murder in Cold Blood, Unbeta'd, writing prompt response
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 02:31:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20827928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/droukhunter/pseuds/droukhunter
Summary: Biavi Dycoran, Republic Army deserter turned former Exchange enforcer turned woman with a personal quest for vengeance, finally corners the man who betrayed her former Republic Special Operations squad and the rest of the Republic forces at the Battle of Serenno, nineteen years ago, to kill him and make their deaths have meaning. But is the choice she's making truly justice for those who died back then, or is it actually for her own personal revenge? And what is left behind for Biavi to continue to move forward with, once everything is said, done, and resolved to what she deems appropriate?





	Justice and Revenge by the Same Hand

**Author's Note:**

> A fill of a writing prompt from a SWTOR RP Discord server I'm in. (Thanks again, Asherren!)  
Prompt [edited to fit the character I've chosen]: "There she stood, eyes glazed over. And within her sight? The Big Goal she'd been working towards for years was...finally in reach, if only she'd take it. It would finally be over--perhaps it might even be her Grand Finale. And it was as good as hers, now. The end of the road was here, but was it really the end?"
> 
> Content Warnings:  
Heed the Archive Warning; I'm not joking when I say that Biavi isn't exactly going to be very nice to her target. Also, heavy implications of and references to Biavi's issues with suicidal ideation (because of the PTSD she incurred over her time as both a Republic soldier and as an Exchange enforcer on Tatooine, and also the fact that she's let the demons of her past consume her to a significant degree instead of actually bothering to seek out help or learn to cope with them).

Her remaining organic eye seemed almost glazed over in the well-hidden yet morbid excitement that she finally had cornered the man who had been the catalyst for her spiral into the darkness she’d felt for exactly nineteen years to the day. In the grim, but satisfying, knowledge that she would end his life and mutilate what remained of his body (like she had for every Imperial soldier who got in the way of her jobs as the top enforcer for the Exchange on Tatooine, she noted with a sadistic smirk) as her long-delayed revenge for the people he’d killed in the name of the Empire (the people whose names had been in her heart, screaming for justice, since their deaths all those years ago).

Her revenge for his betrayal, for the extensive disfiguration of her body, and the proper punishment (in her eyes) for sharing intel with the Empire on Serenno (as per his _real_ job description, anyway) that led to the death of her then-fiancée and the rest of Jenth Squad. “Spades,” "Dodson Elban," Aeschylus “Eschy” Pierce, Cipher Eleven, whatever his name was now or had been—it did not matter to her, not anymore.

All she saw was her goal—an end to the torment that had followed her since she’d lost everything on that accursed planet. And here he was, cornered and offering no challenge to her intimidating stance. The fear palpable in his eyes. Realizing who she was and what was going to happen to him, with no escape except around her (he would not be so lucky as to succeed in that effort) or up the walls, which was easier said than done, as she played with the blaster in her right hand and twirled around the sizable vibrosword in her left. It brought a sort of vindictive glee to her, holding back the malicious grin that wanted to show on her face.

“You’ve got a debt to Jenth Squad, ‘Spades,’ and I intend to collect—with your blood. You’ve given me and the rest of our dead squad nearly _two decades_ of suffering for your choices, you know,” Biavi taunted as she drew closer and the Cipher agent, with great futility, curled further into the alleyway. If this were simply about credits, she might have just captured him, but this was personal, and he had to  _ die _ . She would accept no other answer to the problem that she'd cornered into this alleyway. He was far away enough to get a few blaster non-fatal, but excruciatingly painful, blaster wounds into him, but close enough that she could stab him with the sword to snuff him out for real, she noted. 

She would tell his corpse the names of every member of the Republic military she knew that he had killed by giving the Empire classified Republic intelligence on their planned strategy for Serenno as she mutilated him into something nigh-unrecognizable. Her moment to do what she’d wanted to do since he’d supposedly died, and even more so when she found out he had slipped away like the coward every Imperial was.

But she momentarily hesitated, and she hated it; her inner demons screamed for blood, called her a coward for waiting even fractions of a second longer.

Nineteen years would not be wasted on a second of hesitation, she decided; she fired exactly four blaster shots—one non-lethal wound for each of the other four members of the Jenth Squad he betrayed on Serenno:

The first one to his blaster arm shoulder (his left, as Biavi recalled), for Lieutenant Tiu “Helix” Fahr, an Omwati and Jenth’s gifted combat engineer, the one who always wore her maintenance goggles “for the aesthetic,” who confided in Biavi about her Jedi boyfriend (an Iktotchi, Jedi Master Hoxha “Hawke” Bjalin), for whom she’d petitioned the Jedi Council to marry--the one who was shot in the back of the head by an Imperial sniper lying in wait at the coordinates that Jenth had been hiding out at as she prepared the shuttle for departure.

The second one to his right leg, for Sergeant Mozo Feswin, their Duros demolitions expert and aspiring poet (whose poetry was rather moving for someone who barely spoke)--who’d died of blood loss from the shrapnel of the grenade that had landed in their shuttle went off before he could get it out of there, the one who shielded everyone inside the shuttle as best he could from the blast by wrapping himself around it.

The third one to the side of his lower torso (grazing centimeters short of what would be a fatal wound—aka, one of his kidneys—if not for Biavi’s excellent aim, she noted smugly and sinisterly, his eyes further widening in terror as her face became rather grim, and her scowl became more pronounced), for Captain Vyra Ikova, the Mirialan XO of the Jenth that ‘Spades’ led before his disappearance, the woman whose eyes shone like the brightest stars, the one with the crassest (but still absolutely gut-bustingly hilarious) jokes, the one who so firmly believed there would someday be a galaxy at peace for thousands of years after this war, and Biavi’s dead (but clandestine, due to fraternization regs) fiancée--killed by the internal bleeding from the impact of the shuttle crashing into the ground in the middle of the battlefield and from the fire started by the crash, her last words being an agonizingly quiet declaration of her love for Biavi one last time.

And the last one to his left leg, for herself, the then-Lieutenant Biavi Dycoran, a (at the time) young woman with hopes for glory and dreams of victory for the Republic--the sole survivor of what had remained of Jenth Squad at the time, who’d had to self-amputate her own left leg, crushed by the debris of the exploded shuttle, in order to continue living at all, as the flames licked away at most of the rest of her body. The one who’d found him relaying the intelligence to the Empire in the first place--a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time--but who fought her own traitorous CO valiantly despite the odds being stacked so heavily against her, yet lost nearly  _ everything _ that day (the most obvious example being the scar covered partially by the optical cybernetic on the eye he had stabbed through the evening before everyone else died).

There was absolutely zero percent chance of his escape now, not with his legs shot in such a way that he couldn’t move, and his shoulder so heavily compromised that he wouldn’t be able climb out of the alleyway without being in such excruciating pain that he fell right back where he started from the shock of it. She drew in closer, so close that she could faintly feel the air pushed out by his panicked hyperventilating, and stared him directly in the eyes. There was probably something predatory in her remaining eye because the man shuddered and pushed further back against the end of the alleyway.

Out came the vibrosword, and the monster inside her that she would not recognize if she looked in a mirror. The first swing of the blade killed him before he could even blink one last time, and with every swing following that one, a voice in the back of her mind reading the list of the names of the dead for the Republic in the Battle of Serenno--or at least, what she could remember of it all these years later. 

There was a reason that the Imperial ground troops had quivered in their black-and-red plastoid boots at the mention of her name when she was with the Exchange on Tatooine, and she wasn’t about to let up on that reputation when the corpse of the man who’d put her down that path was lying dead right before her, more and more mutilated with every swing of the sword.

(Even though they weren’t even on Tatooine, but rather the Imperial world of Ashas Ree.)

Now that her rage had subsided, and there was not much recognizable of him left, she found herself still standing in front of the choices she’d made over the past nineteen years since he (unintentionally, perhaps) set her down this path, and the consequences of those choices.

She sheathed the vibroblade, now drenched in the man's blood, searched her surroundings to ensure that no Imperial authorities were nearby, and found herself shakily picking up her blaster she’d placed to the side, putting it back in its holster before sprinting as quickly as she could in the direction of the ship she’d taken to get here to finish the job. Hopefully, before she could be spotted (for whatever reason, she found herself hoping that she hadn’t been spotted already).

The chill of the night air settled into her bones as she ran. She slowed her pace slightly as she realized how hollow, how empty she felt now, after everything was said and done, after she’d spent the better part of nineteen years searching for a man she’d thought she’d killed on Serenno, after she’d finally gotten her revenge.

The emptiness inside her found itself replaced with something resembling a mixture of guilt, disappointment, and regret. Disappointment that Cipher Eleven put up almost no resistance, despite the data that had pointed her here stating that he’d continued working with Imperial Intelligence well past the Battle of Serenno, and that she’d been left to survive once again. He had been armed; she had seen the blaster pistol and sheathed vibroknife on his belt, but he hadn't bothered trying to fight back. She'd expected better from the man who'd pretended to be a CO of a SpecOps squad.

Guilt over doing something, once again, that no individual should ever do, making her feel even less like a person than she already felt she was. At this point, she was more monster than person, anyway, she supposed, but that attempt at comforting herself did nothing to lessen that immense guilt.

And regret that she hadn’t spent her life doing something more important that being consumed by guilt, regret, rage, and revenge--that instead of making the galaxy a better place (which had been the reason she’d signed up for the Republic Officer’s Program in the first place, and then why she’d joined Republic Spec Ops and thus Jenth Squad...before deserting), she’d made it worse. She’d murdered, she’d carried out the orders of a cruel and callous Exchange sector chief to be able to get one step closer to this point, and for what?

Was there ever a chance at being a good person, after the things she’d done in the name of survival, in the name of a “justice” (which had just been thinly-veiled revenge the entire time) that would not bring back the many people she'd lost over the years?

Now back on the ship and among the stars, heading back out of Imperial space (no destination in mind, no clue of what to do now that her life’s work was over), she slipped out of her armor and began to clean the blood off of everything affected, disinfecting herself of Imperial filth, with a cloth while wearing a spare undershirt and a pair of simple pants, her old dog tags hanging around her neck once again in a futile attempt to remind herself that what she’d done was for the good of something.

After all, there was no use holding on to regret that came with the conclusion of a decades-long pursuit of vengeance.

**Author's Note:**

> Biavi Dycoran is an original character (my oldest SWTOR one, actually) who directly ties into the Echoes-verse iteration of the Bounty Hunter storyline in SWTOR (which I'll get to...eventually...I promise). (She's still the Skadge substitute, as she was in some of the older drafts of that fic up here on AO3 still, but you can definitely see why I chose her in particular to be that substitute in this one-shot, to be honest.)
> 
> The one-shot is set circa 12 ATC, as the war has begun once again (this would be the conclusion of Biavi's companion quest if she were an actual companion, by the way, and will likely be mentioned in the BH fic, with possible changes based off of if the Echoes-verse!BH decides to step in and stop her from doing the same bullshit she's been doing since she joined the Exchange and before she broke her employment contract with them), and unpleasant reminders and memories of her past lead her to start looking into leads on the man who betrayed Jenth Squad (her old SpecOps squad when she was enlisted and before her desertion towards the end of the Sacking of Coruscant, as the looters started coming on-planet to get what they could out of the remnants of several destroyed family estates--including her own, but she stopped caring well before that point, as much as she pretends to), after discovering that he hadn't died like she had thought.
> 
> I left out deliberate hints to ficverse, partially for 'verse ambiguity (she does this as every iteration of herself in the SWTOR era, fanfic or otherwise), but also because it carries a different weight when it's implied that this is all she's been thinking about since it happened.
> 
> Also, for the record: CO refers to a commanding officer (so your squad leader, in this case), and XO is your second-in-command (so something like a first mate for a ship or a right-hand-man for any large organization, but just the second-in-command of the SpecOps squad in this case).


End file.
